Biological testing has become an important tool in detecting and monitoring diseases. In the biological testing field, thermal cycling is used to amplify nucleic acids by, for example, performing polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and other reactions. PCR may be carried out using “consumables”, which are sample substrates that are relatively inexpensive, disposable, readily available, and often having multiple sample wells, for example, such as PCR tubes, chips, sample plates, trays, or microcards, thus, enabling varying volumes of samples to be processed and tested. As mentioned above, one such consumable that may enable a number of reactions in a relatively small amount of space is commonly known as the microcard, a spatial variant of the micro-titer plate, which may contain individual wells with a wide range of volumes.
Microcards may be “pre-loaded” with a dried reagent or other similar element of a sample to be tested in each of the sample wells. This pre-loading may be done by the microcard manufacturer who provides the pre-loaded card to the testing facility to be further loaded with a desired test sample. Such a pre-loaded microcard may limit the capabilities of a testing facility to configure their card for a desired test to the configuration of cards they have already ordered from the manufacturer. In addition, the testing facility may be required to wait for a newly configured card to be delivered by the manufacturer, possibly delaying desired testing. Microcards in use today may be filled at the testing facility using filling devices that may be costly for smaller testing facilities to maintain. There exists a need for a low-cost consumable that may be fully configured with varying test samples by a user to a desired configuration for testing.